Lizard ruling shows our voices were heard

Published 9:08 am, Thursday, June 14, 2012

To be frank, we expected the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would list the dunes sagebrush lizard as an endangered species. The fact it didn’t is great news for the Permian Basin.

We applaud the decision by the wildlife service because listing the lizard could have been disastrous for the economies of West Texas and southeastern New Mexico. If the lizard had been added to the list of endangered species, its habitat would be protected under federal law.

The lizard’s habitat is in four southeastern counties in New Mexico and four counties in West Texas, where some of the richest oil deposits in the United States are located.

The federal government made the right call by not listing the lizard, and the decision makers deserve credit for allowing the process to play out. We said all along the correct decision would be made if open-minded officials considered all the information, and they did.

Wednesday’s announcement was the result of hard work by many people to produce the facts and to make the stand against the listing. We’re pleased our collective voices were heard in the current political atmosphere.

We believed the science did not support the listing of the lizard and that property owners and oil companies bent over backward to develop measures to involve the private sector.

We never wanted ranching and oil to drive the critter to extinction, but we were confident that both industry and the lizard could coexist with the right measures in place. That has been done, and we believe the conservation agreements made it unnecessary to list the lizard as an endangered species.

The debate over the lizard raged long enough, and now we can march forward toward growth in the oil and gas sector as well as ranching enterprises. Wednesday was a great day for the Permian Basin, and we have to admit that it restored our confidence in the democratic process. We may have had to scream loud and hard, but we were heard.